nut out

[A] chronic optimistic faith in pragmatic experiment to overcome deficiencies in the knowledge of these experts (rather than set up an expensive preparatory research program) was responsible for the difficulties that immediately occurred when the factory began to produce glass in July 1962. An Auckland newspaper reporter transmitted the parochial attitude of the technical management when he boasted that the finer points of glassmaking “had to be nutted out by Kiwis on the spot.”